Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts
(Otome gokoro sannin-shimai)
With Hosokawa Chikako, Tsutsumi Masako, Umezono Ryuko.
Japan, 1935, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: The Japan Foundation
Naruse’s first venture after departing Shochiku, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts is also his inaugural sound film. Made in 1935, this sororal melodrama is adapted from Nobel-winner Kawabata Yasunari’s Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930), a nocturnal, grimy X-ray of what was then downtown Tokyo’s most decadent and transgressive district. The titular sisters—Chieko, Osome and O-Ren—navigate Asakusa’s seedy nightlife in different ways: one is a shamisen player, the other a burlesque club dancer, while the third spends too much time with racketeers and gangsters. Some of the film’s (non-)actors are real-life revue stars; but most had little to no theatrical training. Naruse experiments with sound and image more than his studio contemporaries, employing two uncharacteristic techniques he would later rarely return to: voiceover narration and flashbacks (at least one of which is itself within a flashback). Three Sisters sees Naruse retaining the hyper-realist yet energetic editing of his silent-era opus, even as he is still finding his bearings at a new production company and with a new technology. Incidental, ambient noise plays a crucial role in the film’s sonorization of the city, as does pre-recorded music—including one remarkable (and hilarious) appearance of the gramophone. – Nace Zavrl
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Sound of the Mountain
Anzukko
Mother
Sincerity
Summer Clouds
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Summer Clouds
The Stranger within a Woman
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Traveling Actors
Scattered Clouds
Scattered Clouds
Flowing
A Wanderer’s Notebook
Repast
Every-Night Dreams
Apart From You
No Blood Relation
Street Without End
The Road I Travel with You / Avalanche
Every-Night Dreams
